Thieves

Les Voleurs (1996) is a French crime drama by André Téchiné you can watch online on iFILM. The film opens with a body — a thief named Ivan brought home in the middle of the night. What follows moves backwards and sideways through the lives of everyone connected to him.

Ivan's brother Alex is a cop. They hate each other. Alex is sleeping with Juliette, a girl from Ivan's crew — who is herself entangled with Marie, a philosophy professor played by Catherine Deneuve. Téchiné builds the story in fragments, circling the same relationships from different angles until the connections click into place.

Laurence Côte took home the Best Actress prize at Venice for her role as Juliette. Deneuve plays against her usual warmth here — measured and difficult to read. Less about crime than about the particular damage people do to each other when their lives overlap by accident. Watch Les Voleurs (1996) online on iFILM.